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About Bellacoolablog

A blog about life in the Bella Coola Valley and the Central Coast area of British Columbia for anyone interested in an incredible and rich part of BC's coast. I hope to provide my thoughts about things as simple as weather observations and seasonal issues, to comments about life and the natural history in the Bella Coola Valley, the Central Coast and the west Chilcotin area.

Note: All photos on this blog were taken by the author unless otherwise noted. While the photos and written material are all the property of the author and protected by Copyright, I'm not a professional photographer and you can use the photos if a link or attribution is provided back to my blog. If you have a need to use a particular photo and you want the high resolution file, leave a comment with your email (I won't publish it) and we can discuss what use you intend the photo for. Grizzly

About Me

A resident of the Bella Coola Valley and observer of the natural history, geography, resources, regional climate and cultural history of the Bella Coola Valley, Central Coast and the West Chilcotin area of BC.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Getting it Done

One of the things I do is spend some time helping out the Tweedsmuir Ski Club. It's a pretty unique arrangement like a lot of things in the Bella Coola Valley. It's a club that goes back nearly 50 years in time and was driven by the desire of Bella Coola Valley residents to have reliable winter recreation. It's unique because our membership consists of an equal number of snowmobilers, X Country skiers and snowboarders/skiers, who all get along and work together to provide fun and healthy winter recreation. Originally they had a small ski hill near the highway in the Bella Coola Valley, but our winters proved to be just too unpredictable. Someone had the great idea back in the 1960's to move the operation up 'The Hill" to the part of Tweedsmuir Park where winter starts in mid October and ends in late May - we're talking a long winter. It was a brilliant move though. These folks started out with a little rope tow on a small hill several kms off the highway, so no matter what you do you've got to get some exercise just getting there. Most people either have a snowmobile or tow or double the people who don't have one, some ski in or snowshoe. Sometime in the 60's they also built what we call the "Overnight Cabin", a log cabin that had a loft and a lot of bunks in it. This cabin was about 2 km from the highway. I think just about everybody who grew up in the Bella Coola Valley in the last 50 years has enjoyed time up there.

Unfortunately in 2009 the cabin was destroyed by the 2500 ha Heckman Pass forest fire. It was a big loss for the community, but word spread quickly and a bunch of folks in the Quesnel area, some who are members of the Tweedsmuir Ski Club and other clubs and some who just wanted to help out, donated a log cabin that was surplus to their clubs needs. Not only did they donate it, these folks organized getting it delivered to our site where we will piece by piece haul it in to the site and later this coming summer rebuild it. (after the mosquitoes die off - I'll tell you about those this summer in a separate post).

Well today was moving day and in one day a building was disassembled near Quesnel BC, loaded on a truck, driven 8 hours, unloaded and the owner of the truck headed off to get to another job. It's been a great example of cooperation between communities, volunteers working hard and a real example of "Getting it Done". I'll post the odd update on the construction as it progresses this year. Grizzly